Pass the Popcorn: The Great Fee Comparison Is Coming

I am just sitting back with my popcorn watching this one play out, because property management is about to change in a way a lot of good firms are not ready for. And I do mean good firms. This is not about anybody doing anything wrong. It is about what you know, what nobody ever showed you, and where you start.

Companies in this industry are quietly landing in two camps.

Camp #1 knows their data needs to be cleaned up. They are not hiding from it. They just do not know where to turn, and they do not know where to start. Their workflows live in people's heads, and that is a known fact in this industry, ask anybody. When the one person who knows how something works goes on vacation, the whole office holds its breath. They live in 5 alarm fire mode most days, so AI sounds great, but getting to AI feels like one more fire. They are still charging 8 to 10 percent management fees, and honestly, their overhead says they have to, because everything runs on manual work and memory, and manual work is expensive.

If that is you, here is your starting line, and it is smaller than you think: find the leaks first. Start with an assessment, see what you actually have, and go from there. You do not fix what you cannot see, and nobody should be embarrassed about that. Every firm I have ever worked with started somewhere.

Camp #2 has their stuff cleaned up, maybe it just needs a little fine tuning. But now they are getting sold everything. This product, that product, bring in all of it at once, and I promise you, I have seen firms try to implement AI that way and drown in it, because there is so much to do just to get it started. Camp #2 does not need more tools. Camp #2 needs one step at a time. One AI tool. One forkful at a time. The tool I always recommend starting with is Claude. If your software allows it, build Claude prompts right into your system and let it help with the work you already do, in the place you already do it. Small, simple, and actually finished beats big, expensive, and abandoned by February.

And whichever camp you are sitting in tonight, there is one question that decides a lot: have you ever done a three way reconciliation, and do you understand what it is really telling you? If the answer is no, that is exactly where to reach out. I can help you set up the tools you need for a clean, effective three way reconciliation, so you maintain the proper why behind your back end financial data, and nothing in your trust accounting surprises you later. Because with audits, it is not a matter of if. It is a matter of when.

Here is where all of this is heading. The Camp #2 firms, the ones with clean data, calmer days, and better work/life balance, are getting their overhead down without adding staff. And when overhead drops, fees can drop and the business can grow. By mid-2027 to 2028, I already see companies putting 3 to 4 percent on the table, and owners are noticing.

And let me be clear about my favorite part of this shift. My initiative is not losing jobs. It is streamlining and improving workflows so the people in this industry get better work/life balance and get back to the human connection with owners and residents.

Now the human re-connection can begin!

So here is the question I keep asking myself while the popcorn lasts: how many years until this shift is impossible to ignore? Two years? Five? And which camp are you in, honestly, because both camps have a next step, and both next steps are smaller than you have been told.

Start there, one forkful at a time, and if you want help finding where your operation is leaking time and money, come find the leaks with SCOREE Services LLC

Tina T. Meeks

Complex Financial Optimizer (CFO)

SCOREE Services LLC